


Home Is Any Place You Find

by nadinehurley



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dom/sub Undertones, Domestic, Drug Dealing, F/M, General Patron-Minette Fuckery, Kid Fic, Rule 63 Claquesous, Trans Character, Vague Criminal Behavior, crust punks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 05:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12403836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadinehurley/pseuds/nadinehurley
Summary: Montparnasse is softer than most give him credit for. Eponine is not.(A series of drabbles about Patron-Minette.)





	Home Is Any Place You Find

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to camille, who has dragged me back to les miserables hell kicking and screaming.
> 
> this AU can probably co-exist with my last patron-minette piece, and there's plenty more where this came from, so be on the lookout for that i guess. doesn't matter how many years go by, patron-minette will always be sketchy southern punk kids in my heart. 
> 
> as always i don't know what sort of warning to put on this, so i'm rolling with the "general patron-minette fuckery" tag. y'all know the drill - there's slurs, there's drug abuse, there's crime. they are, i suppose, technically still "the bad guys" even though i write them as a bunch of wayward softies.

The biggest mistake Montparnasse has ever made was falling in love with Eponine.

It’s not a joke or an exaggeration when he thinks it to himself. Montparnasse has made a lot of mistakes in his life - big, bad, ugly ones - but by far the greatest was accidentally falling head over heels for this wild punk girl, baggage (and kid siblings) be damned. It ruined him; it’s hard to be a lone wolf tough guy with a long-term girlfriend and two snot-nosed kids running around, after all.

Eponine was one of his childhood friends - brash, loud, and annoying - and it was supposed to stay that way. But it  _ didn’t,  _ and then she and Montparnasse were hooking up, and then one night she was laughing her great, barking, ugly laugh while they smoked cigarettes outside of the Waffle House at four in the morning and Montparnasse thought the phrase “I love her,” and realized he was so, so fucked.

 

-

 

Gavroche invites Montparnasse to his 5th grade career day. They are sitting at the kitchen table in Eponine’s crumbly house in the projects and Montparnasse chokes on a scalding gulp of coffee. It’s too early for this.

“I’m sorry -  _ what?” _

Gavroche rolls his eyes. He is becoming more and more of a petulant tween every day. “I just said! Next Friday at school is career day and I’m supposed to bring someone to talk about their job.”

“Ask your sister,” Montparnasse says flatly. As if on cue, Eponine starts banging around somewhere in the house. They hear her screeching at Azelma to wake up for school. The room seems to shake with it.

“I did,” Gavroche continues, unphased. His sisters screaming at each other before the sun has even risen is the norm in their home. “She said she can’t take off work. She told me to ask you.”

Montparnasse closes his eyes and counts to ten, the way Eponine’s crunchy friend Feuilly always says he should. He hates that they’re all rubbing off on him; hates that he’s even entertaining this conversation right now. He doesn’t even have a job, for Christ’s sake. Not a real one, anyway. It’s not like he can tell a bunch of ten year olds what it’s like to sell pot on career day.

Still - Friday rolls around and Montparnasse finds himself folding his gangly body into a tiny desk at Gavroche’s elementary school. He’s scarier looking than all the other parents here by a long shot - only one mom has any tattoos at all, and his battered leather jacket with studs on the collar is a stark contrast to the business-casual attire of everyone else in the room. Gavroche doesn’t seem to mind, though. It is what it is.

He talks about being a pizza delivery driver - the last on-the-books job he can remember having - and tells a lot of stories about deliveries gone wrong that make the kids in class laugh. Half of what comes out of his mouth is bullshit, but Gavroche just beams and beams from his seat at the front of the class and - well. Montparnasse doesn’t remember when he got so soft, but it makes the entire day worth it.

 

-

 

Claquesous is like a poltergeist - always manifesting at seemingly random times with little or no warning and fucking with their things.

They find her in the kitchen one afternoon, eating Gavroche’s Lucky Charms and smoking a cigarette inside (which the lease specifically forbids). Montparnasse is playing househusband today and has just brought the kids home from school. He leaps about a foot in the air when he sees they have company.

“You have to stop doing this shit,” he tells her, trying to catch his breath. “Why are you even here? Don’t you have, like, anywhere else to be?”

Claquesous merely shrugs in response. “Just came to see my favorite little family.”

Gavroche waves at her and says, “hi Sous!”

Montparnasse groans and shepherds him into the other room, sending Azelma with him. He tells them, “go do your homework or something,” before turning back to their uninvited houseguest. “I hate you. You’re like a really shitty wizard. How did you even get in here?”

She cocks a very thin, drawn-on eyebrow and grins her crooked grin, exposing her yellowed and broken front teeth. “Ponine left a window open. You ought to tell her to stop doin’ that.”

“Noted.” He lowers his voice. “Why are you actually here?”

“Brujon needs his money. He would’ve come hisself but we didn’t wanna scare the little ones. He’s a nice guy like that. Also he had court today. So.”

Montparnasse groans again. “They’re no more scared of Brujon than they are you, you crazy bitch. Their dad, like, literally is in jail for cooking meth. And you know, like - you could have texted me? You didn’t have to climb in through the window?”

“I got to keep you on your toes, y’know.”

Claquesous is the worst, and Montparnasse wants to throttle her. Whether this is because she’s jealous of the thing with Eponine - he doesn’t know. But he gets her Brujon’s drug money and Claquesous slinks out of the house (through the door, this time) and their day carries on. He doesn’t tell Eponine they’ve had company.

 

-

 

Montparnasse hates Eponine’s gay crust punk friends possibly more than he has ever hated anyone, which is saying a lot. Bahorel and Feuilly are nice enough guys even if they reek sometimes and play in a folk punk band (washboard and accordion respectively), but when they asked if he and Eponine would like to go on a double date, somehow shotgunning beers in an alley and going dumpster diving was not what he had in mind. So he hates them now.

He shouldn’t hate them - they’ve done more to take care of Eponine than anyone else in her life, probably, and he knows it. But over his dead body will Montparnasse go climbing into any dumpsters looking for free shit. He might be a drug dealer, but even he’s got standards, thank you very much.

Eponine has fun though, and finds a skateboard that’s only a  _ little  _ busted. Feuilly says he can have it fixed up for Gavroche before Hanukkah.

 

-

 

They’re getting ready for bed one night. 

Eponine’s brown-and-blue hair is piled on top of her head in a tangly bun and she’s half-dressed in a giant Rob Zombie t-shirt and nothing else. She’s trying to get the kids to brush their teeth. It’s not unlike herding cats.

“I don’t  _ care  _ if you don’t like the toothpaste we have!” She doesn’t mean to shout, mostly. It’s just one of those things that happens. “You are both too damn old to argue with me about this! Brush. Your. Teeth.”

Montparnasse smiles fondly from where he’s sprawled on the taped-together hand-me-down couch in the living room. He should probably go scare some sense into Gavroche and Azelma - he’ll tell them their teeth are going to look like Claquesous’ if they don’t brush them.

First, he gets up and locks all the windows.

 

-

 

The same night, once the kids have finally brushed their teeth and gone to sleep, Montparnasse slips outside to smoke a cigarette on the front porch. When he comes back inside, Eponine is in bed and on the phone - she speaks quickly, quietly, and hatefully. Her Southern accent is thick and strange around rudimentary, broken Japanese. It’s got to be her mother on the other end of the line.

“Go to hell,” she finally spits out in plain English before hanging up and throwing her cracked, archaic iPhone down on the bed.

Montparnasse stands frozen in the doorway. His eyebrows disappear behind his floppy, purple-black fringe. “Yikes. I always forget you, like, speak another language. It’s cute.”

Eponine narrows her eyes at him. Now is not the time. “Like a first grader. Ma barely speaks English.” She goes quiet for a minute. “She needs money. She wants to see the kids.”

“Oof. What’d you tell her?”

“I told her I’d call CPS again if she comes anywhere near my fuckin’ house. I may also have  _ insinuated _ that Brujon would go break all her teeth if she keeps tryin’ to talk to us. I hate her. I can’t believe she’s not also in jail.”

Eponine flops down on her back with a tremendous sigh. Montparnasse sits down next to her. He’s bad at this sort of thing, but he cards a hand through her tangled hair and hopes she gets the point. Eponine crawls into his lap and buries her face in his shoulder. Neither of them says anything after that.

 

-

 

Subtlety has never been Eponine’s strong suit. This is as clear as ever when she finds herself wrestling Gueulemer on the tiny patch of grass that serves as her front lawn.

It starts innocuously enough - everyone is over one Friday afternoon, drinking beer on the porch. Montparnasse has just left to get the kids from school, because it’s his turn again. Eponine steps inside to take a phone call and comes back out with murder in her dark, heavily-lined eyes.

“I just got the WEIRDEST phone call!” she exclaims dramatically, the screen door banging shut behind her. “Apparently Gavroche got sent to the office today for wearing a Suicidal Tendencies trucker hat to school! I know _ I  _ didn’t buy that for him, so I was just curious which one of you  _ fucking retards  _ taught my ten year old about thrash metal?!”

No one points out that she has just referred to Gavroche as her actual child instead of her brother. No one says anything at all, really - they just stare in silence at their tiny, angry friend. They’re a hardened bunch of punks and petty criminals but they’re all a little scared of Eponine. Besides - there’s forged paperwork and a birth certificate somewhere that says Gavroche was born to an unwed, fifteen-year-old Eponine ten years ago. It’s how she got them their house.

“Gueulemer has a Suicidal Tendencies tattoo,” Claquesous points out in her quiet, gravelly voice. She’s as cool as ever. “Maybe you should ask him about it.”

Gueulemer is a giant of a man - six foot something and all muscle. Eponine is four foot eleven on a good day and skinny as a rail, but she  _ launches  _ herself at him, knocking him off the porch steps and into the grass. She screeches unintelligibly and calls him “a fucking dumb ass idiot” while hammering on his chest with her fists. Nobody attempts to pull her off of him, but Babet and Brujon both stand up and watch with rapt attention, whooping when Eponine socks Gueulemer in the jaw. It’s just like the good old days, before she was a kept woman with kids to look after, when she would fight just to fight.

Surrogate mother or not - Eponine’s still got it, and she wins.

 

-

 

The reality is, between Montparnasse and Eponine and their gaggle of sketchy friends, no one knows a damn thing about child-rearing. Gavroche is ten and Azelma is thirteen and Gueulemer has taught them about thrash metal and Montparnasse has taught them to shoplift, much to Eponine’s chagrin (because they shouldn’t have to live that way now that they’re with her). They both learned the word “cunt” from Claquesous recently. Babet swears up and down that he’s an expert on parenthood because he was married once but Eponine knows almost nothing about his ex-wife and children so he probably doesn’t know anything.

Eponine has the kids in a Taco Bell, trying to get them fed before she has to go in for a shift at the bar tonight. Montparnasse has “things” to do later but she has, miraculously, been able to nail down parent-of-the-year Babet for a last-minute babysitting gig. Her friends are terrible, but like hell is she going to leave Azelma in charge of herself and their brother.

They’re waiting in line, and she explains this to them: “So, uh, change of plans tonight y’all! Babet’s gonna come hang out with you guys while Parnasse and I are gone tonight. You have to be cool for him, okay?”

Azelma wrinkles her nose. Her fake septum ring is crooked. “Is that, like… a good idea? I don’t like Babet. He’s weird.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, Azelma. I don’t know why you don’t trust me be a reasonable, intelligent, logical adult!” She doesn’t mean to shout it. She never means to shout, but she’s frazzled right now. She’s not stoked to leave her siblings with Babet either, but he’s all they have right now.

Everyone in the entire Taco Bell turns to stare, and Eponine tries to lower her voice. “Babet is chill. He’s fine. He has kids. What’s wrong with Babet?”

“Ummm, doesn’t he sell human teeth on the deep web or whatever? Also he smells bad.”

Eponine feels like her eyes are going to pop out of her head. Why the fuck would anyone sell  _ teeth  _ on the deep web? Who taught Azelma about the deep web? What even  _ is  _ the deep web? “Who told you that? Why would he do that?”

“Sous told me. I dunno.”

Eponine grips her sister firmly by the shoulder. “Stop listening to Claquesous. She’s the one you should be scared of - she’s crazy, and she’s fucking with you. Please be good for Babet tonight. I need you to try to do that for me. Are you listening? Will you do that for me?”

Azelma just shrugs and says, “whatever.”

Eponine learns later that Claquesous was not, in fact, fucking with them. Babet used to work in a dental office and has sold  _ stolen  _ human teeth on the deep web for what can only be dubious purposes. She also learns that Babet’s ex-wife has a restraining order against him - meaning he hasn’t legally been allowed to see his children in  _ years.  _ Eponine wants to kill him and Montparnasse too, for deciding that this wasn’t important enough to warrant telling her before she left Babet alone with her siblings.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Montparnasse tells her after they’ve gotten into a fight about it. They’re in the bedroom. The kids should be asleep by now, but their raised voices are surely going to wake them if they aren’t careful. Gueulemer is, for some reason, watching television in their living room, and they’re probably disrupting him too. “I mean, like, my mom smoked crack every night when I was their age and I turned out  _ fine. _ One night with Babet won’t kill ‘em. I mean… they’re still alive, aren’t they?”

Eponine slaps him in the face. She wants to  _ murder  _ him.

She fucks him instead.

 

-

 

The sex gets weird even if they aren’t angry.

Montparnasse likes it when girls are mean to him. It’s why he ended up involved with Claquesous for as long as he did - even if she  _ wasn’t  _ a professional dominatrix, she would still be mean as shit and that’s good enough for him.

Eponine hits and bites whether she’s in the bedroom or not, so they have a good arrangement going. It’s different than it was with Claquesous though. Montparnasse likes to be bullied and Eponine likes that she can take him apart so easily - her big, mean, crooked man just  _ melts  _ under her sharp, bony hands, every time. He doesn’t protest when she undresses him roughly, leaving his fancy designer clothes and the  _ good _ binder in a mangled heap on the floor. He’ll complain about it later as he’s particular about his things, but right now he simply chokes out a moan while Eponine sucks bruises into the pale skin below his collarbone where he’s got her name tattooed in a gothic script.

“I could kill you, you stupid idiot,” she breathes into his ear. Dirty talk has never been Eponine’s strong suit, even at the best of times. Sometimes she’ll throw in some raunchy Japanese, but right now she’s pissed and it isn’t worth the effort. It never seems to matter anyway. She pulls his hair harshly. “Did you hear me, dumbfuck? Answer me when I talk to you. I’m gonna break your scrawny ass in half.”

She scolds him again for not telling her about Babet - about leaving the kids, her kids,  _ their  _ kids in what she has perceived to be some kind of vague danger, because putting Gavroche and Azelma back in harm’s way after managing to get them away from their horrible parents might be her only real fear. Eponine spits in his mouth, as if to underscore her point.

It goes on and on. She stops being mad when she starts going down on him.

It’s like therapy, she thinks - to have her face buried between Montparnasse’s tattooed thighs; to be in control of something and watch him fall apart because of her. She licks and licks, expertly. He yanks hard on her tangly hair and comes with a loud cry, and he is beautiful all the time but Eponine thinks he’s most beautiful like this. She sits up on her knees and they kiss even though her mouth is slick with him. And Montparnasse doesn’t apologize - will never apologize, not for this or anything else - but Eponine knows he’s sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](http://witches--house.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/witches_house). will gladly talk your ear off about patron-minette / miserable lesbians / whatever.
> 
> xoxo.


End file.
